


What Heroes Do

by AliceInKinkland



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Brunnhilde | Valkyrie-centric, Gen, Hope, Introspection, POV Brunnhilde | Valkyrie, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), discussion of slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-30 01:42:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13939869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliceInKinkland/pseuds/AliceInKinkland
Summary: The problem is that it’s only the battle that’s over. And fuck if she knows what she’s supposed to do next.





	What Heroes Do

“Well,” says Thor once the last burning fragments of Asgard fade into the distance, “I guess it’s over.” He looks as stunned as Valkyrie feels. The crowd has started to dissipate, off to comfort each other and explore the ship, but she and Thor and a few others can’t seem to move, even as Surtur’s flames fade into the cold darkness of space.

The problem, she thinks, is that it’s only the battle that’s over. And fuck if she knows what she’s supposed to do next.

* * *

The first evening, they have a feast.

It’s meagre in terms of food--they barely have enough to feed everyone on board until they reach the nearest hospitable planet--and the crowd begins the evening still subdued by the magnitude of their collective tragedy. But as the night hours of the ship’s artificial diurnal cycle wear on, spirits rise, and she finds herself remembering why she never quite felt at home at parties on Sakaar. The songs are mostly unfamiliar, although there are a few she recognizes. But the way they are sung, sound lifting to the curved ceiling of the cargo-bay-turned-dining-hall, fills her with something she’s just drunk enough to admit might be hope.

Everyone here has lost almost everything, and they’re rebuilding, carrying on.

Songs give way to recitations of epics, which give way to poetry of a less refined variety. Wide smiles crack weary faces, and children up past their bedtimes giggle and stare. She used to be good at this, remembers joyous, bawdy nights with her sisters composing cutting poems on the fly. She might be good at it still, but she doesn’t join in.

“Hi,” says a small voice beside her, “are you the valkyrie?”

She turns to find a woman and a young girl. The woman holds the girl in her arms. She guesses the two are related--both have similarly full lips and wide brown eyes, their skin the same colour as her own--but she knows that few families on the ship are fully intact, and people have been pitching in to care for children who have lost everyone else. The girl looks tired but alert, and she stares at Val with such awe that Val can barely hold her gaze.

She nods warily. “That’s me, yeah.”

The girl’s smile broadens, and she jumps out of the woman’s arms. “How did you get to be a valkyrie? How did you get your armour? How did you get your sword? Do you have a horse with wings like in the paintings? Can I be a valkyrie too?”

“I--uh, there are no other valkyries anymore.” The girl’s face falls. Shit. “But I mean—” She’s not sure what to say.

“Please excuse us,” says the woman. She grabs the girl’s hand, pulls her back. “My niece, Astrid, is simply so very excited to meet you. You’re her hero.” She turns to Astrid. “Let’s not overwhelm her, now.”

The girl nods, then just looks at Val, stares at her with round, wondering eyes.

 _You’re her hero._ She would be lying if she said there wasn’t a part of her that was basking in that. But a larger part…

“No,” she says. “I mean, thank you. But I’m no one’s hero.”

The girl frowns. Val looks up and realizes the woman is frowning too. Why can’t she just say what she’s supposed to say, what she remembers saying to girls like this, all those centuries ago? What was it? _Indeed we do have beautiful winged horses, the better to meet our adversaries with might and honour._ Or, _If you are very brave and strong then yes, perhaps you too can be a shield maiden._ Or, _Any heroic deeds we do are for the good of Asgard, and therefore for you, little one, so I accept your praise with gratitude._

Instead, she says, “Look, I’m sorry. I’m not very good at this. But I hope you have a nice evening, both of you.”

The woman nods, and Val doesn’t think she’s imagining the frustration on the woman’s face. She picks up Astrid and walks off.

Out of the corner of her eye, Val catches Loki watching her with a curious expression on his face. She glares at him, and turns back around, trying to lose herself in the festivities once again, but something feels shifted, twisted, inside her.

* * *

On the second day after Asgard’s destruction, Korg finds her after lunch. She’s brought her dishes to the washing station in one corner of the cargo bay and is just about to leave when he makes his approach, shifting from foot to foot in what she’s pretty sure is a nervous gesture. Not positive. She hasn’t met a lot of...rock people.

“Scrapper 142,” he says. She doesn’t bother correcting him. She’s not sure what she wants people to call her, honestly; she avoided names on Sakaar for a reason. She’d thought maybe Brunnhilde again, now that she’s back among Asgardians, but she hasn’t been Brunnhilde for so long it feels like a tunic that no longer fits her. Others on the ship have been calling her Valkyrie, Val for short, and she isn’t sure how she feels about that either, but she hasn’t stopped them and it seems to be catching on.

She nods at Korg. “Yes?”

“I just figured, if we’re going to be living in close quarters like this, it was high time we cleared the air,” he says, still shuffling back and forth.

She has no idea what Korg is talking about, but she shrugs. “OK.”

“I’m a pretty friendly guy,” says Korg. Val wonders where he’s going with this. “And I respect that you’re on the rocky road to redemption. No pun intended.” He gestures down at his body and laughs to himself.

“Thank you?” she says.

“I guess you can probably tell I want to talk about Doug,” says Korg.

She tries to think of who Doug is. Is he another passenger? She frowns. “Um.”

“I’m not trying to start anything. But, y’know, sometimes I look at you and I get kinda pissed off. Because of Doug. But I’m willing to forgive—”

“I’m sorry,” she says, knowing it’s the wrong thing to say but not sure what else she can do, “but who’s Doug?”

Korg is quiet for a long moment, and all she can hear is the clink and splash of dishes being washed and the low murmur of chatter from those still eating. Her stomach rolls like a hangover.

Finally, Korg speaks. “Doug was a buddy of mine. You sold him to the Grandmaster. He’s dead now.”

Oh.

How’s she supposed to respond to that? She thinks of all the things she used to say, used to tell herself, when the guilt descended: the demand was there so she might as well be the supply; someone else would if she didn’t; it wasn’t her job to change the world so she might as well cash in on the way things were. Then she thinks of her conversation the previous night, with the girl and her aunt, and feels disgusted with herself all over again. People think she’s a hero here, and it’s not...right. It’s not true.

She has no right to want it the way she does.

“Forget it,” says Korg, when she doesn’t say anything. “Like I say, I’m an easygoing guy.” He shrugs, the rocks that make up his shoulders scraping against one another with the movement.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “For what it’s worth. Which is probably nothing.” She feels the press of her hip flask in her front left pocket, one corner digging in to the flesh of her stomach, and has to stop herself from pulling it out and draining it here and now.

“Thank you,” says Korg. “Wish you’d remembered him, but still.”

She feels another burst of shame. “Well I’m, yeah. Sorry.” Maybe she can take one of the ship’s escape pods, or slip away when they make a pit stop, admit that she isn’t cut out for any of this and just find some other planet of lost and unloved and broken things on which to wither away. She won’t, though. Will she?

“I think I’ll head off now,” says Korg. “But hey, good chat.” He shuffles away, and then she does pull out the flask.

* * *

The escape pod is blessedly quiet, away from the sounds of a thousand or so people living in close quarters. She sits down in the navigation chair, rests her legs on the steering controls, and contemplates the galaxy spread before her.

She’s not going to leave, she’s _not_ , but she’s still come here. Retreated here, she supposes. Just for a moment.

The cabin of the pod is about the size of her ship back on Sakaar. She wonders what’s happened to that ship, if it was commandeered for whatever ended up happening with the revolution or if some other scrapper snatched it up and is flying it out amidst the portals and junk heaps right now, searching for something, or someone, worth selling. Mostly she wonders if whoever has it now is enjoying the guns that track the pilot’s hand movements, because that shit was _custom_.

She’s not going to leave, truly, because taking an escape pod in a non-emergency situation would be a dick move, and she really is trying not to pull any of those. Although. She estimates this pod could only fit ten people comfortably, so maybe a few more a bit less comfortably depending on its oxygen mechanism, and there are only three other escape pods on the ship. If shit hits the fan, not everyone will be able to get out regardless of the exact number of pods.

But she’s not going to leave. Honestly.

She sinks lower into the seat, her back to the door.

“Planning your great escape?”

She turns the chair to see Loki slipping inside the pod. The door slides shut behind him with a hiss.

“No,” she says, turning away from him once again to stare out at the stars.

“It looks an awful lot like you are,” says Loki.

“It’s just somewhere I can be--no, you know what? I don’t need to justify my actions to you.”

“Aren’t you afraid I’ll simply look into your head again?”

“Aren’t you afraid I’ll kick your ass again?”

Loki laughs, and moves towards her. It might be a lunge, or it might just be a step nearer to the window, but either way, she rises and kicks, sending Loki flying into the bank of buttons making up the steering controls. He sinks to the floor, still laughing, and she’s deciding whether to laugh as well or kick him again when the control panel springs to life, a rainbow of blinking colours.

“Preparing for emergency launch,” says a friendly voice of indeterminate gender. The sound seems to come from every direction at once. “Doors are now locked. Launch will commence in ten...nine…”

“Fuck,” she says.

“My sentiments exactly,” says Loki. He moves away from the panel, turning to examine it.

“Eight…”

“Look for a reset button!” she shouts.

“I’m trying,” says Loki. “You’re the one familiar with Sakaaran technology. And, I might add, the one who propelled me onto whatever set this off.”

“Seven…”

She moves towards the panel, scanning the buttons. “And you’re the one who had the access codes to all these ships. What were you gonna do with them if you don’t know how to fly them?”

“Six…”

Loki rolls his eyes. “I planned to figure it out down the line. Or have someone else figure it out for me. I had more important matters to attend to first.”

“Five…”

She snorts. “Yeah, you sure did.” The reset button, where’s the reset button? She’s never worked on any ship big enough to have an escape pod. Doesn’t play well enough with others.

“Four…”

Loki runs his hands along the walls, the ceiling. He gets down on his hands and knees and peers at the underside of the dashboard. “Oh, don’t give me the honour speech again,” he says, coming up clearly empty handed.

“Three…”

“What honour speech?” she frowns. Then she shouts, “Cancel!” in case the pod is voice-controlled. “Cancel escape sequence. There is no emergency.”

“Two…”

“I’d help jog your memory but there really isn’t time.” Loki throws himself bodily at the door to the pod. It doesn’t budge. Loki moves back to do it again, but she catches his arm.

“Unless falling through the void of space is your idea of a good time, try not to crack the glass right before we’re about to be launched into somewhere with no oxygen.”

Loki doesn’t respond, but he stills, standing in the centre of the small pod, an odd expression on his face.

“One,” says the voice. “Launch commencing.”

The pod pushes off from the dock of the ship with enough force that its two occupants are both thrown back against the pilot’s chair, Val first and then Loki on top of her. He gets to his feet immediately, pulls down one of the jump seats from the wall and sits, leaning forwards, elbows on his knees.

“Setting trajectory for nearest source of aid,” says the voice emanating from the pod. “Estimated time remaining: two hundred forty hours. To cancel, say ‘cancel’ now.”

“Cancel! Fucking cancel, fuck,” says Val. “Why didn’t that work sooner?”

“Evacuation procedure terminated. Estimated time back to ship: one hour thirty-two minutes.” The pod lurches, rights itself, then slowly begins turning around until she sees the ship in front of her, a tiny speck in the distance.

“What?” says Loki. “How are we already so far away?”

“The launch sent us far enough away that we’d be out of the blast radius if this was an actual emergency,” she explains, because she does know this much about big-ass Sakaaran spaceships. “But the pod can’t navigate that quickly all of the time, so it’ll take us a while to get back.”

Loki frowns. “Can’t you just—”

Whatever suggestion he has, however, is interrupted by a crackle coming from the speakers. “How do I--is it working? Can they hear me?” says a voice that is unmistakably Thor’s.

“Yes, we can hear you,” says Loki drily.

“Brother? Is Valkyrie with you?” says Thor.

“Yeah, we’re both here,” she says. “We’ll be back in an hour and a half, apparently.”

“But you’re coming back?” says Thor.

She suddenly realizes how this looks, the two biggest loose cannons of what’s left of Asgard launching themselves out of the ship in an escape pod. “Of course, we were just—”

“No need to explain,” says Thor, and she wonders if it actually looks incriminating in a whole different way to him. Huh. There’s a thought. “I’m just glad to hear you will return.” He ends the transmission.

She and Loki sit in silence for long enough that she looks for something to fill it with. “What were you saying about an honour speech?” she asks.

Loki shrugs. “Just thinking of what you said, the first time we met.”

She frowns. “When Thor and the big guy escaped?”

“No,” says Loki, “at the Grandmaster’s party.”

If she’s being honest, she remembers very little of what’s probably the last of the Grandmaster’s parties she’ll ever have attended. The whole thing has only come back to her in snatches: she remembers a girl with three eyes admiring her muscles and telling Val to find her later, and she remembers some kind of entertainment act involving naked dancers jumping through rings of fire, and she remembers throwing up in a vase. She’s not sure how she got herself home that night, and she never did find the girl. She does remember talking to Loki, now that she thinks about it, sometime after the fire dancers but before anyone started having sex out in the open, but she definitely can’t remember the details.

Maybe she can play it off like he just wasn’t memorable enough for the interaction to stick with her. “Guess you didn’t leave much of an impression.”

Loki raises an eyebrow. “I’m sure. Well, while you were enjoying the open bar I was keeping my wits about me, so perhaps I can help you recall. The Grandmaster was...talking to me, and he called you over--do you remember that?”

Maybe? She shrugs.

“Alright. He called you over, and he said you were just the best, you’d found him so many of his favourite champions over the past few centuries, yada yada.”

She smiles. “He used to do that a lot,” she says fondly, before wondering if it’s strange that she still feels some sliver of fondness for the Grandmaster, under the anger and disgust and healthy dose of fear.

“Then he wandered off somewhere,” Loki continues, “and you said something to the effect that I seemed to have obtained my position with the Grandmaster in a short period of time, and there were only certain, shall we say, _positions_ one could assume that would allow for such rapid access.”

She crosses her arms. “Come on. You definitely said something first to provoke me.” She’s pretty sure he did. She wouldn’t just say that, not when she’d seen the kinds of fates that befell the Grandmaster’s favourites over the years. Would she?

Loki shrugs. “There may have been something. Maybe, maybe not. It’s too bad you don’t remember.”

Perhaps Loki is making the whole thing up. She can’t see why he would, though--it’s not exactly painting him in a good light thus far.

Loki seems to have realized that too, because he says, “If you truly have no recollection of this, perhaps it’s best we move to some other topic of conversation.”

“Oh no, I want to know where this is going,” she says. Then, belatedly, she adds, “And it’s starting to come back to me.”

Loki grins like he doesn’t believe her but he’s humouring her anyway. “Alright. Then I said I supposed I should have chosen a more honourable profession, for instance a slaver such as yourself.”

“Fair enough,” she concedes. She thinks of the conversation with Korg that led her to this stupid pod in the first place, and feels a twist of shame in her gut.

“Ah, but that’s not what you said then,” says Loki. “You said, and this one I can quote exactly, ‘If you think any of this is about honour, kid, you’re not gonna last long here.’” His imitation of her half-Sakaaran, half-Asgardian accent is annoyingly accurate.

“Huh.” She isn’t sure what to say to that.

Loki’s mouth twists into some kind of half-smile. “I found that comforting to think on during several trying moments in the days that followed.”

She nods. “That’s the kind of thinking that kept me going for a good long time on Sakaar.” _And hollowed me out. And made it so I don’t know how to be anything else anymore._

Loki turns away from her to stare out the window. “I often think I felt the most free at the points in my life when I thought I had the least honour left.”

She feels like she should tell Loki to shut up, that she didn’t sign up for whatever turn this conversation is taking, but she finds she doesn’t want to. “Me too,” she says instead, surprised at how true it feels. “Everything felt easier when I wasn’t trying to…” She waves her hand.

“Be a good person?” says Loki.

“Sure. Live with honour, I guess. If we’re on the subject.”

Loki smirks. “You’re saying I should disregard your advice.”

She smiles, and impulsively punches him in the arm, light and playful. “Hey, it was good advice for Sakaar.”

Loki smiles back. “That it was.” He pauses. “Currently,” he says, articulating each word as though determined to convey exactly what he means, “I am following the general policy of ‘fake it til you make it.’”

She pulls out her flask and takes a long, full gulp, wiping her mouth off on her sleeve.

“Like what, you ask yourself ‘what would Thor do’?”

“That’s not the way I’d put it,” says Loki, but she’s starting to know his tells--something in the movement of his eyes.

She considers for a moment, then offers the flask to Loki. “That sounds exhausting.” But maybe doable, in a pinch.

Loki takes the flask and just holds it, cradling it in his hands. “Oh yes.”

A thought occurs to her, and she frowns. “You know whatever you were doing with the Grandmaster--honour doesn’t come into that, right? It wasn’t—” she tries to find the words “--shameful.” She shakes her head. “It _was_ stupid, though. You’d have been dead within the year.”

Loki laughs, short and humourless. “I’m disappointed. You, of all people, thinking I want to be coddled.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that you don’t need to lie to make me feel better. And--and I had plans to depose him, I’ll have you know.”

“I’m not--you know what? Forget it.” _So much for trying to be a good person_ , some bitter part of her thinks. Let him deal with whatever sore point that is. Whatever.

Loki shakes his head. “Regardless,” he says. “I’m afraid I have no further suggestions on the subject of being an honourable person.”

“Hey, I’ll give faking it a try,” she says. She grabs the flask back, since it’s not as though Loki’s making use of it.

“Then we may do honourable deeds. But being honourable people seems--less attainable.”

She thinks of how quickly the escape pod shot out of the ship, and how much longer it will take to get back. What an apt fucking metaphor. “Why did you come here?” she asks. “Into the escape pod, I mean. Or were you just following me around?”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” says Loki, but this time she thinks he’s letting her see the lie in his words, humour in his eyes and a faint blush on his cheeks. She could get used to that. He shrugs. “The same reason you did.”

“To find somewhere with no crying babies?”

“No, to see if I would do it. Run. Same as you.”

Shit, he’s perceptive. “I prefer to think of it as proving to myself I _wouldn’t_ run,” she says.

“And yet here we are,” says Loki. He sprawls into a mock-lazy slouch that has no business looking as elegant as it does, placing his hands behind his head and looking out on the stars as though this whole thing was his plan all along.

Wait--was it?

“You’re not serious?” she says.

Loki laughs. “No. Although if we abandoned ship for good, we _would_ avoid the awkward glances Thor will no doubt direct our way when we return.” He eyes her for a moment. “No, I’m not serious. I want to go back. Mostly. I _will_ go back.”

She lets herself imagine, one last time, what it would be like to run. The satisfaction of cutting ties, like a sword through a knot too complex to unravel, her tangled life becoming broken but simplified. She imagines finding some other rock-bottom planet and working her way up in whatever job would let her fight and be alone and drink herself into oblivion. Slowly chipping away at her moral compass once again until she believed that she could never be anything more. It’s tempting.

She pushes the fantasy away.

“That’s good,” she says, “because that’s where we’re headed.” She gestures around them at the pod, slowly making its way back to the docking port of the ship. She hopes there isn’t a crowd waiting or anything, although there probably will be--being cooped up seems to be making everyone hungry for drama. She sighs. “Guess we’re today’s fodder for the New Asgard Rumour Mill.”

Loki smirks. “Shame none of the juicy bits will be true. Although we could change that.”

She’s about to say _don’t push it_ , but then she looks at him, lean frame still sprawled out on the jump seat, and she thinks...well. She could be interested. They still have an hour to kill, after all.

She beckons him towards her. “Let’s see how you kiss, Lackey, and we’ll go from there.”

* * *

Thor finds her at dinner, halfway through her meal of Sakaaran giant beetle spiced like Asgardian roast. He sits down on the bench across from her and smiles.

“I’m glad you came back,” he says.

She grunts and shrugs. “I told you, I’m done running from my problems.”

Thor frowns. “Are we one of your problems?”

No. Yes. She shakes her head. “Only if the cooks keep removing the shells before boiling these things,” she says, skewering a piece of beetle on her knife and bringing it to her lips. “A little more butter wouldn’t hurt, either, unless we’re short or something.”

Thor smiles. “I’ll pass the message along.” He pauses, as though not sure whether or not to say something, then starts, “I just mean I am grateful you stayed. It is a brave thing. It’s—”

“What heroes do?” she says, lips quirking into a mocking smile, mouth full of beetle.

“Yes, exactly,” says Thor, more seriously than she would like. He really does know, she supposes, what heroes do. But that doesn’t mean she is one. Loki’s words echo in her head. _We may do honourable deeds. But being honourable people seems--less attainable._

“How’s the kingship thing going, your majesty?” she says, deflecting.

“Today,” he says, grimacing, “it involved a lot of delicate conversations about resource allocation.”

She pretends to shudder. “Better you than me.”

“Ah, but I think you could help, actually,” says Thor. “While you were living on Sakaar, did you ever fix your own transportation device?”

“Basic repairs. When money was tight.”

He reaches across the table to slap her on the shoulder warmly. “In that case, I have a task for you.”

* * *

It’s two days later, when she’s squatting waist-deep in cables in the ship’s control room, that she realizes.

She and Korg have spent all of the previous day pouring over the plans to the ship, trying to disable the music and lights that turn on whenever anyone has a shower and redirect the energy to more practical purposes, like powering the makeshift healing room, or cooking meals, or filtering air for significantly more people than the ship was intended to hold, even during the wildest of the Grandmaster’s special occasions.

It turns out that prior to his life as a gladiator, and in between fomenting revolution, Korg had been a handyman—“Handyperson, handy guy, mostly a plumber really, which my mum always said was one of the most vital jobs there was on Sakaar, what with all those open pools of dirty water everywhere. Can Asgardians get cholera? Makes you think, doesn’t it?” They’re getting along alright, thankfully. Doug has not been brought up again.

Her muscles are aching from kneeling and reaching into the recesses of the control room wall, and Korg looks just as tired as he shines a light into the cramped space and reads from the plans. Neither of them want to be here, she thinks, and just like that she wants to laugh, because she _realizes_.

Loki is wrong. Wrong about honour. If you do enough honourable things, and you keep doing them, that starts to be a part of who you are. Right? Even if you feel like you’re faking it the whole time, even if you’re bored, or scared, or feel anything but noble, bit by bit some of it’s got to rub off on you. That really is all there is to it.

She wipes grease off her hands onto her leggings, squints at the wires in front of her, searches for the right tool.

Good enough, she thinks. Anyway, it’s worth a try.


End file.
